Why I hate domestics... yet again

[SUNRAY]

Customer has been in the house for 2 months, survey highlighted several electrical issues including the CU in the garage being fed with T&E buried directly in the ground. Part of the sale conditions being that the garage feed was replaced. Garage CU contains 7 MCB's for: RFC for an uncounted number of sockets [>20], lighting, 2 sheds, greenhouse, hot tub and outdoor sockets/lighting. A total of 148A worth of OCD's but not a RCD in sight. I didn't actually check the size of this cable but I believe it to be 6mm², the other end is glanded to a plastic CU but no earth connection to the armour. The cable runs under 4 paving slabs where it appears just enough sand was scraped out of the way for it.
The other issues were solved by removal of offending items and cables.
Will be reported to the 2 scheme providers and CHAS listed on his invoice.

 

[ericmark]

Commercial is easy in a way, that does not comply, I will disconnect until you can afford to do some thing to make it comply. Simple. But domestic it is a case of that does not comply, but it is required to keep the premises habitable so can't disconnect, but a garage is not really required to make the home habitable so same as commercial simply disconnect. Have I missed something?

I don't like that SWA it seems well under size, and from what you say over the 3 meter permitted before the overload could be fitted so it would need some serious re-design, however it depends on the money they are prepared to spend, when I moved into this house I could afford to spend, didn't want to spend, but there was no one saying that must be done NOW, or bill we could not afford.

New home owners seem to expect to have time to correct things, but be it rotten timbers or dangerous gas or electrics some times there is no option to fix it now. But where the slabs can be lifted and new cables fitted it is really not too bad, it is when there is a new drive which was a major selling point, which now has to be lifted when the trouble starts, and the can't you just fix it up for now, next year we can afford xyz but not this year.

Buying a new house with a hot tub only to be told sorry hot tub needs to be disconnected does not go down well.

 

[SUNRAY]

As it happens the Garage CU looks like it was 'designed' to take a 2U main switch or 4U RCD so it was very easy to move the main switch across and add a spare B32 between switch and busbar so there is at least some OCP involved. The predicted load seems fairly low: hot tub, lights in outbuildings and occassional powertools/mower so 32A is probably going to be ample. The SWA run is around 8 metres so well over the 3 permitted.
I did disconnect some of the outsde lighting as is was T&E buried direct and in a very poor state found by L-E of ~30KΩ, which was actually the reason for the visit, customer felt a tingle while working in a raised flower bed.